I made a new something! How do I save it to a library?

Support Basics & Interface
1

Ok, so pay close attention now (and please don’t just say “mark it as an asset lol”):

  1. I was working on an existing project, and needed a geo nodes setup.
  2. I made it, and it worked great, so now I want to make it reusable by others.
  3. We have a “library” in a shared network folder. I want to put my geo node group there.

How do I export it from my Blend file into that folder?

The only way I currently know, is to either add a fake user on the node group and then delete everything in my file and save as, or create a new file and then append the node group into it before saving.

2

As far as I know, there is no way to export a single object as a new .blend file. However, there is an other way from what you are doing: have 2 blend files open at the same time and use ctrl+c → ctrl+v in the viewport to copy the entire object between files.

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3

Link to it then “make single user.”

4

For what it’s worth, there’s an add-on for that. Full disclosure: I wrote that add-on. Supports nodes as well as objects.

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5

That’s terrific, Fweeb! (Yeah, “there’s an add-on for everything” now …)

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6

Thanks, that looks very interesting and I’ll certainly try it! :+1:

It’s sort of sad that such a basic feature needs an add-on, though.

7

I actually asked if I should submit the add-on for being included with Blender (and perhaps enabled by default). However, this workflow paradigm doesn’t quite align with the overall vision of the Blender development team… and after a bit of discussion, the rationale for not including it does make sense. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a workflow that quite a few people would like to use (myself included). Fortunately, that’s why community add-ons exist. :slight_smile:

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8

I completely get why it doesn’t align with the Blender vision, because this would enable real world examples to be submitted easily with Blender bug reports without much effort and they don’t want that. :speak_no_evil: :hear_no_evil: :see_no_evil: :wink:

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9

Yeah… They’re very stubborn in their ways, even when people show them -why- things could be changed for the better.
I like Blender, but this attitude is infuriating at times…
Thanks for the addon btw, this is really helpful. :+1:

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10

I think that I would push again to have it be included in the standard distribution . . .